Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - #197: Honduras-USA recap (WCQ3)

Episode Date: September 10, 2021

Berhalter disasterclass in the first half, followed by three good changes at the half and a rout of Honduras in San Pedro Sula. What a crazy night, with an 18-year-old Mexican-American from El Paso as the hero.0:30 preamble and the first half45:00 the second halfSupport Scuffed on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/scuffedJoin the Discord: https://discord.gg/X6tfzkM8XUBuy our merch: https://my-store-11446477.creator-spring.com/ Skip the ads! Subscribe to Scuffed on Patreon and get all episodes ad-free, plus any bonus episodes. Patrons at $5 a month or more also get access to Clip Notes, a video of key moments on the field we discuss on the show, plus all patrons get access to our private Discord server, live call-in shows, and the full catalog of historic recaps we've made: https://www.patreon.com/scuffedAlso, check out Boots on the Ground, our USWNT-focused spinoff podcast headed up by Tara and Vince. They are cooking over there, you can listen here: https://boots-on-the-ground.simplecast.comAnd check out our MERCH, baby. We have better stuff than you might think: https://www.scuffedhq.com/store Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to the scuffed podcast. I'm Adam Bells in Georgia. With me is Greg Velasquez in Iowa. We talk about U.S. men's soccer. The U.S. went from looking totally hopeless to beating Honduras 4 to 1 in San Pedro Sula, thanks to a mammoth performance off the bench from Anthony Robinsanda. I'm going to call it iconic game winner from 18-year-old striker, Ricardo Pepe. We needed three points to feel alive. And thank goodness we got them. Lots to talk about. Greg, how you doing? I have thrown caution to the wind at this point and we are back to winning the World Cup. It felt good though, right? I mean, we're going to have a lot of, we're going to have a lot of downer talk on this pot for sure. Not too much.

Not too much downer talk. I mean, it's hard to have downer talk when your 18 year old striker on his debut has a hand in four goals in an away Concaf World Cup qualifier. That's true. Yeah. It was wonderful. It was wonderful. And credit to Burrhalter, he made changes that needed to be made at half. I love it.

We always end up talking about the meta-narrative because we take so long to record after these games. My favorite thing about this is like that should Burrhalter get credit or not? And for me, like, he gets credit in the form of not having everyone calling for his job for at least another month and a half. That's the credit he gets. Right. Yeah, I mean, like, yeah, we're going to talk about how he set the team up. for the game to begin and how how just horrible that was and how horrible the first half was. But, you know, we needed to get the three points and he did, he did what needed to be done.

I don't know exactly how that credit gets applied to his account, but there's some credit there. Maybe it's like it's credit, it's credit that reduces his debt or something. It definitely does. No, just, you know, as the game was playing out, even like the very non-react, sectionary media, media folks. We're having some real questions about Greg Burhalter's future with the national team. And I think that's when you know that things are getting a little dicey.

Not saying that a loss would have been resulted in him losing his job. But it wouldn't have been far-fetched if it had played out as a continuation of the first half. Yeah, I think in a lot of countries it would have resulted in his firing, but not probably in the USA. Should we do the lineups? Yes, that's where a lot of this starts and finishes, huh? So Burrhalter trotted the boys out in a 343. Would you call it a 343? I'd call that after I saw it, take the field, yes.

It's not what I thought it was going to be when I saw the names. And you read the whole name list off and then I'm going to confess something real quick. Okay, so Turner and Goal, fine and Dave. Andy. Miles, Brooks, and McKenzie as the three centerbacks, Brooks in the middle, McKenzie on the left, Miles on the right. Adams at right wing back. And then James Sands and Kellan Acosta in the midfield, James Sands makes his first appearance of the window. Is that right? Yeah. First appearance of the window. That's correct. And then Bello, George Bello, his first appearance of the window at left wingback. and then we had a front line of sergeant at right wing,

Pepe up top as the striker, and then Pulisic as the left wing. Okay, so here's my confession. It had been rumored that Pepey was starting. Like we actually sort of heard whispers of a peppy and sergeant start. So I think a lot of us were like trying to figure out what kind of three, five, two it might look like. And my whole thing was like, I don't care as long as,

you know, if we're going to do that, as long as we have Acosta and Adams in there to be our cage, match central midfielders. I'm golden. And so when the lineup came out and I saw that peppy and sergeant were starting, I was like, okay, there it is. That's a 352. Saw all the centerback's names.

Saw Adams and Acosta in there. And I was like, golden. We've got like the center mid covered. Let's see how this plays out. I just assumed that DeAndre Edlin's name was on the list because he was the only right back on the roster at that point. So it did not occur to me at any point that either. I know a lot of people were trying to figure out if it was going to be Adams or

Costa. I didn't even put it together that one of those two was going to be playing right wingback and not in the center of the park. Oh, yeah, that would have made you much more comfortable with the line out, I think. I thought he would put, maybe he'd put Acosta that right wing back. And I thought maybe it was, you know, obviously it was just totally a responsible speculation. But I was thinking like maybe a 3, 412 with, you know, Pulisic in a free attacking role. And then Sergeant and Pepe in a two striker role.

And people will say, well, why would we do that? that. We've never really done that, or at least never done it effectively. And my response to that was, well, it can't be any worse than what we've been doing, you know, let's like just throw something at the wall, see what happens. So I wasn't feeling horrible about the lineup actually before the game started. But boy, was I wrong about that. It's funny that you say, like, let's just throw something at the wall because because that's exactly what it feels like to happen.

It's essentially like, you know, we talk about how Burrhalter makes a lot of cute choices. The roster at this point, we feel like is borderline cute proof. And I think, you know, Greg Berhalter maybe took that as a challenge because he got cute right away in El Salvador with Aronson and Central Midfield.

But if that El Salvador lineup was getting cute, like this lineup for Honduras was like full Clinsmanian. Because there was nothing about this group that looked like it was any kind of a plan or part of any kind of a logical progression from anything we have seen from Burrhalter leading up to this. Right. I thought it was kind of, it was funny maybe is the wrong word, but notable in a rueful way that Berhalter, when asked why he played Adams at wingback, he was like,

he played that position for R.B. Leipzig all year last season. which is a partial truth. But also, what does that have to do with us and like us being a good soccer team? It's like, I just felt, I was struck by how sanguine he was. He was so untroubled in the press conference. You know, he got a couple of decent questions thrown his way. Greg does not act like a man who is under pressure or feels like things are maybe not going well. It's really striking to me in the press conference, which you can watch.

It's on YouTube. I can't even, well, I can't even imagine like the emotional, I don't even know what it would be. Like, there are so many different feelings you could have in his shoes after dropping four goals in the second half of an away World Cup qualifier. When going into halftime, you might have had some thoughts about your job being at stake. You might have. Yeah. Yeah, we should take a moment to. point out how rare that is for us to drop four goals in an away qualifier in Central America. I don't.

Yes. Go ahead. Well, just like the best part of this is not only does it sort of contrast how dismal that first half performance was like to see what happened in the second half, but it kind of might also a little bit put to bed the notion that we can't do this in a way World Cup qualifiers because it's impossible because it's so difficult to play away in Conccaf. I mean, you're not supposed to be able to do that. That's what we've been told for the last, I don't know how long, year, like last three World Cup cycles.

Yeah. And, you know, we could have, at halftime, the argument for a way qualifiers being very difficult was a stronger one, you know, and then it suddenly wasn't a strong argument anymore.

Yeah, so let's do the Honduras lineup. Luis Lopez in the goal, Nahar, Berera, uh, Figueroa. and Rodriguez

across the back line Rodriguez had I think a little bit of a rough game and then Pineda Arriaga Flores and Toro

across the band of four in the midfield and then they had two strikers Brian Brian Moya and Anthony Lozano

and I don't know how did let's just jump right into like a bigger picture question how do we get so much better

in the second half Okay, and I think everyone will take it as a given that that's correct. We were better in the second half. I mean, it was a very basic just change of our formation. We went back to our totally like normal 433 system that everyone was much more familiar with. And we obviously looked way more comfortable. I mean, we were totally lost in the first half. And there's no reason to think that we shouldn't have been lost.

I mean, no one knew where they were supposed to be. Nobody knew how they were supposed to interact with the players around them offensively or defensively. And so it was just an absolute mess in the first half. Yeah. Does it does the absolute mess of it make you, you know, reluctant to to take too much from anyone's bad performance? Yes. Like I take very little from the bad performances. I'll give like one exception as we go through the chronology probably. But yeah. I mean, we can talk. talk a little bit about Honduras. There was, you know, there was another team in the game, not just the U.S. And I think Honduras contributed both to the bad and the good, in a sense,

because I do think Berhalter didn't expect Honduras to be as aggressive as they were, defensively. So I think that probably played into what his tactics were, what his lineup choices were, and he may have been taken by surprise there. Honduras known for sort of absorbing pressure in that 4-4-2, but instead they had a much higher line in confrontation. They really came after us. My guess is that Honduras were actually pretty clever. They rotated almost entirely against El Salvador for their middle match day and still got a point at El Salvador with a totally rotated side.

So I wonder if they looked at what we did saw that we didn't rotate much. We were really running some guys, adding a lot of minutes up, and thought that they could essentially get us fatigued by springing this, you know, ultra-aggressive defense at us. Was it really ultra-aggressive? No, well, a little. I mean, it definitely wasn't like the passive 4-4-2 that I think most people were expecting. It didn't look anything like the game that they played in the U.S. for the Nation's League semifinal. Or like the game against Canada a few days earlier for us.

So I bring that up to just say that, you know, that had an effect. It's not like they were spectators to our misery in the first half. And then I want to say that also played a part in the second half because, once we switched into our more for more familiar lineup, they didn't sit back and absorb, even though they were up a goal. They continued that sort of aggressive posture, and we absolutely sliced them to pieces.

And it's surprising that they did that, or that they stuck with it, because, you know, again, they'd just, we just had zero success breaking Canada down when they sat in a low block. So I'm a little bit surprised that Honduras didn't adjust and sort of force us to actually come up with more solutions in in our sort of half court offense yeah foira coito was the chant in the in the

stadium because that that seems borderline irresponsible to me it kind of reminds me like when remember when we beat honduras six to one or was it six to zero back in uh 2017 spring of i think it was arena's first uh qualifier they were it was somewhat similar they were just a total mess and they were they were not sitting back and we sliced them to pieces. I don't know why, I can't understand why they would do that, especially watching the way we played three days earlier.

So if anyone has, if anyone has the Honduras post-match press conference, I would love to hear the rationale for, if one was offered. Right. Why they went with that after, even after we got the first goal, like they kept coming up at us and it was just so,

I do kind of want to say easy. Like, we could just hit it up. And then it was just, we were off to the races with really good players. We have really good players on our team. Yeah. Okay, let's get in the timeline unless anything else before we get into the timeline? Timeline. Okay.

I just noticed in the first minute, we got a chance for George Bellow on the left side of the penalty area. And he hit a shot that I don't think was that far off. We didn't get a replay of it, I don't think, on the broadcast I watched. but sort of a scramble and he he ends up with the ball left of the goal and hits a shot that goes over Lopez and is I guess a couple yards wide of the far post. So second minute, Pulisic's, I just noticed a couple of instances where Pulisic was on the ball and I wish he would have released the ball faster. So this is going to be my little axe to grind in this episode. He has Sergeant available in the box And instead waits a beat and hits across to nobody

Then he's driving up the left channel And has Adams wide open on the right wing You know streaming up the right wing Doesn't appear to see him ever And try you know tries to I think he plays it he plays it ahead for sergeant And it's not it's not really on But you know we were

Do you go ahead? Go ahead Can I ask you Do you think this is a general Pulisick vision issue or do you think it is it in any way, I swear I'm not just trying to like pile on Burrhalter in the setup. Do you think it's in any way like not knowing where all the pieces are the way that he might know that in the normal setup that we're used to seeing? I think, yeah, it's got to be both.

It's definitely both. I mean, it's definitely a Pulisic fission issue. He's not, he's, I think he's consistently doesn't, he's not looking for that interesting pass, you know. he's a he's very good at dribbling people and that's what he focuses on when he's on the ball until until like the the sort of obvious pass presents itself um does he does he find what when the obvious past presents himself that that's maybe a little generous but like but he he gets in he dribbles until he can't dribble anymore and he either loses the ball or just like

you know takes a little bit of a long touch and just pokes it to somebody it seems like there's a lot of that. That's kind of what I'd say too. I actually now want to go back through the whole window and see how many sort of like incisive passes he made once he beat somebody on the drill. Because he does routinely beat a guy or even one and a half players. I kind of like to think of it.

Yeah, that's a good way to put it. But then, yeah, does he make anything happen then once he's done that? Because we talked about the Canada game. So Gino Dest had that very good example where he did beat guys for somebody else to come in and commit and then sort of gets it ahead to Brendan Aronson in a ton of stuff. space. And it's like that's what you need from your hero ball players is play do the hero ball where you can beat a defender straight up even against a set defense in good position. You can still

just create an advantage all by yourself. But then what do you do with it? Right. And I, you know, Bima Jenkins, who's on Twitter, probably a lot of listeners have seen him flitting around on that website. And he's also in the discord. He he made the point that if you have Pulisic in a free role, which was like kind of the hope. I mean, he's always in a free role for the U.S., let's be honest. You want him to beat those one and a half guys and then release a ball quickly to get his teammates involved in the attack. And I feel like he could be so much more influential if he was doing that more consistently. And so the argument people make is, well, he feels like he has to take the team on his shoulders and like he has to do it himself. And I, you know,

just don't have much sympathy for that. Like, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't buy that. All right, well, one, no, go ahead, go ahead. You don't buy it. I don't buy it. And also it got, it gets him hurt, you know, that's, that's what I was going to say. The outcome we hadn't talked about was, uh, he beats the first guy is about to beat the second guy when either a third or the first guy who's catching up to the play slices his legs out.

So. Yeah. So releasing the ball would help in a lot of different ways. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. like a car in a junkyard, you know, just like a bunch of bodies flying into him

from different directions. And it did literally, literally what happened is he came off the field with an injury after dribbling probably two and a half guys. And but then he's just like right into a dead end at the top of the box. And he's, and who knows how long he's out for?

Yeah, and I'll jump in here to say too, I know you just talked about this being your axe that you're grinding. I don't think you're saying, that pool sick is not a very good player. I don't want to put words in your mouth. But I think it's just something to keep track of as we get more into qualifying is how much we're actually getting from pool of six outrageous talent. Like he is an outrageously talented dribbler of the soccer ball.

And so like that's just something I want to kind of track is what are we actually gaining from it as a team? I think we will. I mean, it's such a valuable skill. Like it's, but in this window at least, it was. interesting that mostly what we gained from it was free kicks. Yep. And we did, you know, not something that we capitalized on in this window.

Free kicks, that is. And even, well, let's just keep going with the timeline. But I think Pulisic, I think this is a problem. I mean, the way you say it is this something we need to track. But I think it was a problem last night. And maybe not a coincidence that we scored three goals after you came off? I think it was a little bit of a coincidence. I mean, the second half, when did he come off?

We'll get to that. But we just looked good overall in the second half. Even when he was in, we were still getting some looks. Right. But he did. It was more just the second. On that goal, on that goal, the first goal that he, you know, Pulisic was involved in, he, he made it a little more complicated than it needed to be.

Let's wait until we get there. You're way ahead. Okay. The chronology has to remain chronological. Okay. Let's keep it chronological. Fourth minute, a speculative cross and header from on. Honduras, just quick note of that.

Fourth minute, Sands. I thought, so Sands comes in for a lot of criticism in this game, justifiably so. He was not sharp. But I thought he had some good moments. And here was one where he's pressing or he's, you know, he's closing down a guy. And I just noticed, this was on the near sideline,

so on our right side. And I just noticed Sergeant was not quite active enough, like right off the bat in the, press like if you're if you got sands closing on a guy on on the sideline sergeant you want sergeant to come in and like take that long touch away from sands you know just bury him and i thought that the coordination of that or like the the hunting in packs as you've said before um harmony of that that action just wasn't quite there in the first half and this is where my question is always going to be, is it a sergeant breakdown or is it essentially like there's no reason we should have

expected harmonious hunting in this situation because they aren't sure what packs are supposed to be hunting. Yeah. I don't want to give like a blank check reprieve to the players. But when we get further along here, like I will almost kind of do that in a couple of these instances. Yeah. You got people calling for John Brooks to be benched nowadays.

and, you know, like, Sergeant not to be called up anymore. And they're like, yeah, if what you have to say is, is an antidote to that kind of talk, I think I'm all for it. I'm all years, Greg. Sixth minute, we get sort of an unsettling poor pass from McKenzie. You know, he gets his pass picked off on the left side. It just was like shades of the Mexico game in the Nations League. Fortunately, McKenzie recovered well and, you know, went back and got between the ball, between the goal and the man who took the ball from him.

And he also had a good game, I thought a pretty good game the rest of the game. Yeah, it definitely made the eyebrows perk up because it was exactly like his second big mistake in the Nation's League final. It wasn't the one that gave Tecotito the goal, but he did the exact same thing later on in the match just further up. and just like in that one, in the Mexico Nation's League final, he caught back up to the play and snuffed it out. So again, hopefully we don't keep creating me.

It's kind of a metaphor for the entire match, creating your problems that you then have to solve. Let's not create our own problems just so that we can solve them impressively. Yeah. Good looking attack from Honduras in the seventh minute. Brooks almost gives it away. and this is when I'm starting to think

he played a ball off to the right sideline with his left foot and it almost gets, he played a ball off to the right sideline with his left foot and it almost gets picked off Brooks, that is. And I'm just thinking, man, our centerbacks are looking a little iffy right now.

And maybe. They probably weren't expecting they weren't expecting any kind of pressure from Honduras is my guess. I don't know. That's, I mean, they should still be able to solve some of those. straightaway problems, but

Yeah, I mean, that's a good, as good of an explanation as I've heard. And then Sands files Jonathan Toro in the ninth minute, a good chance for Honduras after Ariaga's free kick is blocked. And then Sands allows a dangerous ball across the face of goal from Carlos Paneda, that one that sort of curls in right in front of, in between Turner and the centerbacks. But nobody's crashing on it. Yeah, no one's crashing.

And I actually thought our, I think the commentator said something about like the U.S. guys left it, maybe because they were worried about putting in their own net. I actually thought they did a good job basketball style of each player, like sealing off their player from attacking it. They were all like touch tight on their player. So it was just like, okay, well, if I literally just block this player from advancing, then no one can make a play on the ball. I didn't notice that. They were boxing them out, basically.

Yeah, yeah. So what, did you think of peppy and sergeant at this point in the game you know 10 minutes in if you do if you want to pass on that question that's fine i'll pass and i'll wait for uh for for their moment they almost connected later okay uh 10th minute i get some we get some excellent defending from bello on andy nahar which is notable because nahar was rampant on the night i thought easily honduras's brightest player i think Vince Vince uh on the discord says it's like yeah the ball on a string and it is weird that he was so comfortable dribbling the ball on the same pitch that

where like several of our players had trouble controlling the ball. Just weird. Just weird. 11th minute. And also notable because Bello had a very, very large mistake later in the game defensively. But I thought he had some, he did some good stuff defensively too. 11th minute, good ball over the top from Adams forces Lopez to come out to head. it to safety and he just absolutely crushes his teammate.

I think it was Pereira. A good ball from Adams. Pulisic was pursuing it. I will say I was starting to see a theme of a lack of courage on the ball from the U.S. Just a constant backpasses. I call it a lack of courage. You probably have a more technical explanation for it. No.

So it felt very different from the Canada game for me. So when you're watching Canada and you have the ball with time and you have, you know, the players moving in the expected spaces, that's where I feel like it's absolutely just like lack of courage. In this game, it's hard to say that because everyone has to like look up when they receive the ball to see where their teammates are because who knows where your teammate is going to be in this sort of ad hoc formation. Maybe, again, maybe I'm being too, I'm not being hard enough on the players and what we should expect them know, but you have a bunch of players who've never played together.

You know, they're literally new to each other. And then you just sort of explain to them how you're going to play and then expected to be pulled off. Like, that's just, it's insanity. If we had just, if we had stuck with the 433, even though it's a bunch of new players playing together, at least they've had experience in that setup. You know, in the setup where, okay, I get that it's James Sance now

instead of Weston McKinney or whoever would be, but I know where the guy is supposed to be and I can direct traffic around me because I know what everyone's role is in this setup. And we didn't give ourselves that opportunity in the first half of this game. Yeah, you know, Sands, I'm not sure, I mean, Sands, I'm not sure any midfielder

would have looked good in this setup, like for the U.S. But, yeah, Sands was especially bad. So we'll just say now, right? James Sands doesn't belong in a midfield two in a three-four-three. Is that safe to say? Can I say that? That is safe to say, yeah. Because he had so much ground to cover.

I think Burrhalter in the press conference, he said we were stretched because, well, he said part of it was that the centerbacks didn't, weren't pushing up fast enough and, you know, bringing the line higher. But also he blamed Ricardo Pepe for freelancing in the press. for pressing without outside of his instructions. So I don't know. That was Burrhalter's explanation for it. And again, Burrhalter might be spot on

on the like textbook X's and O's of the thing, you know, of his description of how it played out, but from just like an actual what you can reasonably expect to accomplish, like you shouldn't expect the X's and O's to play out well when you just throw all of this, new setup at a group of players who have never played together.

Yeah. Okay. 16th minute, nice little sequence of passing from Acosta in Pulisic, right up the gut, and Acosta slips it to Sargent, who's stepping in front of a scrambling Marcelo Pereira in a momentary 2V1 with Pepe wide, but Sargent's first touch is negative. This is sort of the lack of courage that I was trying to reference earlier, and his second touch is a pass that's blocked, and Honduras is heading the other way. way. Sands gets a little brothered by Ariaga and

Sans's footing was bad the whole time. Somebody said it was like he was butter dancing out there. I think legitimately his boots, he needed longer cleats or something. And then Ariaga waltzes down and slips in Brian Moya, who hits the side netting with Robinson closing him down a pretty good shot. Yeah, cleat issue slash. Sometimes if the game's just too fast for you, you end up on the ground a lot. So I do think that in the role he was at, the game was just happening too fast around James dance, which it's supposed to be one of his strengths, right?

He's supposed to be a guy who's excellent at reading the game, getting his angles right, and maybe he can only do that in certain narrow situations as far as what his, like, whether it's a center back and a back three or the deep center mid in a three-man central midfield. Or maybe it was just butter, butter dancing on back. Matt Cleats. Yeah. It's probably all of the above.

But it is true. Like when things are moving too fast for you, I've played in games that were above my level as a soccer player and ended up on the ground a lot. I know that. I know that feeling very well. Let's see. 17th minute, Sergeant Chase is down a long ball from Acosta

and squares it for Pulisic, who's just tackled at the top of the box. That was the end of the road for Pulisick on this night, the top of the box. also 17th minute McKinsey blocks a shot from Moja after another good attack from Honduras so if you're getting the idea that it was up and down match it was it was in the first 25 minutes or so

yeah that ball the one that you just talked about sergeant like the amount of space that we played sergeant into like it was unthinkable if you thought if you're comparing it to the Canada game like to just hit that ball up to Sergeant who had the entire right side of the field with just one defender around him was crazy. It felt way too wide open for what we were expecting this game to look like.

And then we didn't really know what to do with all that space. 19th minute and Acosta Cross and Pulisic attempts to head it. He was offside on the replay. Probably should have left it for Sergeant who was not offside, but Sergeant's not the guy to call somebody off a ball at this stage of his career. 20th minute I noted some timidness from Adams after another good across to switch way out wide to the right. Adams is sort of in a 1v1 and has sergeant arriving for the sort of like classic 1-2 and behind. Did you know this moment I'm talking about?

Right. So like if that's if that's Anthony Robinson, he's going to play to sergeant's feet and he's going to dart in behind, you would think. and Adams and Sargent just sort of start the backpass process. The back pass process is perfect. 23rd minute, poor diagonal from Robinson. Looks like we're having trouble building. 24th minute, really struggling to possess the ball. And then we get this good chance for Pepey in the 24th minute.

You said you wanted to talk about this one. Why don't you describe what happened? well because most of the time leading up to this it did feel like sergeant was just like not in the game and I'm not like a big body language guy but like he just didn't look comfortable right he just looked like he was not in a position that suited him and I don't know if that's because he's playing winger or if it's just like he's gassed or I don't know what it is but then here this was just a really good moment for Josh sergeant probably his best of the window with that long ball and him just doing a relatively simple. He just nods it back across the face of goal for Pepe.

Anyway, it just stood out as like a very productive moment for Josh Sargent in a game where he didn't have a lot of those moments. Right. Pretty comfortably our best chance of the first half, right? Yeah. Definitely. Yeah, I mean, basically our best moment of the first half. It was a cross from Bella.

kind of hopeful. And then it was Pepe, like you said, it was Pepey who tried to take it on the half volley and didn't get it right, didn't get it on frame. But that's okay. There was redemption for Ricardo on the evening. 26th minute, we get the beginning of the sequence that leads to the goal in the 27th minute for Honduras.

And it's a really sloppy moment from Sergeant in Sands. It seemed like a lot of passes were like the weight wasn't right on the passes or they're to the wrong foot. And this was a really good example of that. Sergeant tries to play it back to Sands and then they just collectively sort of give it away. And a two-minute period of kind of chaos ensues where it's just up and down, Honduras is like just whipping the ball into our 18. And then they score when Jonathan Rubio skips by Brooks in zone 14 and slips Toro wide left. and then he crosses it for for moya who's diving header beats turner it's a good finish um with brooks sucked up field and the whole play in front of him i i think it's pretty clear it was

bellow's responsibility to pick up moya arriving in the box and he just doesn't recognize the danger at all if you want to get kind of like upset at george bellow watch the replay closely yeah so i'll talk about bellow bellow right away then uh This is something I've noticed with him, or I noticed it when he was playing for Atlanta, but this was like a year ago or so that I picked up on this, and that his weak side defending just looks really naive. Like, again, we're talking about, like, youth soccer naive, where as a team breaks on the, it'd be the, his team's right side of the field because he plays left back.

Like, he doesn't adjust to the most dangerous player. It's like he just stays goal side of his initial man, who's usually way out by the side. sideline like, okay, that's my guy. My guy's out by the sideline. Got to keep track of him so that he doesn't score when it's like, okay, but, but George, the danger here is going to be the guy arriving at the penalty. The centerback's had to leave who's in the middle of the goal. Like, you should probably go get goal side of that guy and just forget about your guy

over on the sideline. He's not going to do anything important here. So that's like exactly what it was. Like Bellow never, uh, broke hard to get goal side of the man who was very obviously in the most dangerous play. So, yeah, that's a huge mistake from a defender and not a new thing in my mind for George Bellow. So that's a little bit concerning. Can we back up on this play, though?

Because I think this is like the perfect encapsulation of our whole system being a mess. Absolutely. Okay, so I'm not going to have everyone's names here, but this sequence kind of reminded me of the Canada goal where they're just passing it around their centerbacks with ease. and in the Canada goal, I mean, they're just kind of shifting the ball. And the Canada goal was Brendan Aronson who stepped up to the ball but got too centrally square with it, I guess, to allow the ball to go wide to a wide-off man on the sideline where we had no help. In this one, it was Josh Sargent who was coming to pressure.

And I think I've seen, I think I saw Taylor Rockwell criticizing Sargent for this. And it's true, Sergeant comes to pressure the guy, but doesn't really put the correct pressure on, I guess you'd call it, and allows just a super easy, split to a guy who's wide open behind our two forwards. If you're calling Sergeant Pepey sort of our forwards at that point, Pulisick nowhere in the play. And I see it as,

I basically see this as full like a full on coaching failure or full on setup failure. Because I don't think there's any reason, you know, it's easy for us looking at that video from above, from the camera angle to be like, okay, here's how the X's nose should play out here. But this is one where there's no reason to think that Sergeant knows what his job is in this moment.

and there's probably nobody telling him which way to pressure the ball. Pulisic isn't doing any work to come in and help defensively. So the first way they break us down is to just get this ball to their central midfielder behind our front line with total ease. So that looks like a huge mistake. And then they basically do the exact same pass to beat our next line of players, which would be Sands and Acosta, to find the next man ahead. and that's the one that Brooks steps do.

But again, like, there's just nobody who knows where anybody should be on any of our lines. And that's the telltale sign of, like, a broken system. So they beat our front line. And then Brooks is on a man. Miles Robinson's not on anybody. But Brooks is the guy who leaves his man to come step. And as we all know, Brooks has a propensity for getting battleshift. And he absolutely gets battleshipped here.

He gets there late because he probably wasn't sure when to go. Because that's another thing. I know I'm just kind of right on this. I love it. I love it. But this one really stuck. It was a textbook from battleshipping, I think it's fair to. But the thing is, this isn't usually the situation that Brooks gets battleshipped in. He's usually pretty good at meeting players in this situation who aren't face, who are like, you know, back to goal.

He'll come in and wreck them or he'll come in and like break this up really well. He does it all the time when we're playing in our 433. It's usually like when he has to go out to the sideline where he's facing the sideline and a guy has him squared up and can just get ahead of steam and run downhill at it. him that he loses out. But this one, like, it's just these little timing things. His timing's a little bit off because he wasn't sure if he should be the guy to go. Whereas in most situations, Brooks is very sure of himself in these moments. So it's all these little things that sort of take our guys out of the play. And again, I'm not giving him a blank check. Like, you still are a very good defender. You can do better than what you did here. But we see him sort of get wrong footed a lot. So that's sort of how

I see it play out. And then it turns into poor marking on the, on the weak side. to actually lead to the goal. Yeah. Adams is a little high on the right side too, wasn't he? Yeah. I mean, again, and there's a double effect there where Adams is a little bit high because Adams doesn't play wingback for the U.S. national team very much

and isn't in good rhythm with our centerbacks. And Adams wasn't in our center midfield, which got beat really easily, even though Adams is by far our best center midfielder. So you have all these like aggregating, issues with our setup that culminated in this attack for Honduras. Yeah. The total soccer show.

Go ahead. Go ahead. The last little details, John Brooks is on a yellow card, too. So that might have factored into his decision not to just clean the guy out once he got sidestepped, because he could have, but he pulled out of it to not, potentially to not take a second yellow in the window and get suspended for the next qualifier. Well, I hope Berthelter and Brooks have a good chat about it, you know, about what happened there. And Brooks is able to tell Burhalter,

hey, I just didn't know exactly whether I was supposed to step or not because I never play, because we never play in this formation. Okay, yeah. And so it's, so it's one zero and it's, it's dark days, bro. It was, it did not feel good. It felt like this is going to, this is, the sort of coup de grace of the window.

Everything's going to hell in a handbasket. Yeah. And like I said, this was the culmination of like the setup, you know, showing all of its holes. And it really felt like at this point, again, Burhalter had moved from like the cute decisions, which, you know, still can kind of make sense. You know, death at left back. Okay, we can, I'm talking about Verl Salvador. Aaron said it's center mid. Okay, I guess.

Like these aren't crazy. but then this crazy setup he ran for Honduras felt like we'd entered into like active harm territory where he's not just sort of like it's not cute now he's actually hurting us and we already talk about how difficult these away qualifiers are the last thing we can afford is to is to actually like dig our own hole so this is where I really did feel like okay like you might really need to think about whether or not Greg Burholter is the right guy for this campaign Yeah. I was going to say earlier, I'll just mention it. The total soccer show breakdown of that goal is pretty good. They talked about that. They were pretty hard on Sergeant for the pressing thing. And then the next, from the 26th minute to the end of the first half was brutal.

And it did. I was ready. Like if it ended 1-0 and we looked the same way in the second half, I would have been ready to fire Burrhalter. It goes back to that. like is he actually at this point interfering with our ability to to gain points in the World Cup qualifying and that's what this game felt like uh it wasn't just like oh we just have some things we need to fine tune like that first half was was rough which is why i find his his manner in the press conference just sort of so impressive in a way like how do you

come out of that not not looking a little um you know peeked a little white but he didn't he literally just languid languid in the press conference it looked like the rest of the first half just looks like all the passes are heavy or to the wrong foot like I said earlier in a lot of backwards passing and then hunders started passing the ball around at the back taking the air out of the game and the crowd at the olympico starts allaying us in the 32nd minute yikes uh 33rd minute a decent effort from Rubio at the top of the box, curls just wide. It would give up a respectable looking shot there,

playing with fire. 35th minute, Sands gets magged on the sideline and fouls the guy, starts to feel like a quicksand performance from Sands. Now, I'm not trying to make a pun. I just think that's a good total soccer show-ism, the quicksand performance. 38th minute, another Moya shot

after turnover from a cost. on the left side. Honduras just dominating the game at this point. Got poor giveaway from Sands. Pulisic and Sergeant misconnections. Bello, there was a little bit of a, that's like right before the half, a little bit of a bright moment

when Pulisic floats a ball to the backpost. And it looked to me like Bello was fouled as he was making a run at the backpost. Might have been a penalty in if Concaf were using VAR. and then right before the half Brooks has to block another shot from Moia and then Turner throws it to Pulisic

like a 50-yard throw and Pulisic dribbles straight ahead past Pereira and does actually get a shot off which is blocked by Figueroa right off his foot so we let but it feels bleak right it just feels real bleak and the other thing to remember here is It wasn't an absolute nightmare as far as like we weren't giving up 15 shots and Matt Turner standing on his head.

It just felt like there were no ideas. It felt like there was no life. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there was that brief period where it felt like Honduras was kind of dominating the game. But for the most part, they weren't getting a ton of good chances either. It just like you said, we just looked impotent. And we limped into the half down one zero.

And like I said, I'm thinking we got a fire Burrhalter. And people will say, well, you're a reactionary, you're, you know, you're a nub to this whole thing. But like in the live table, we have two points from three matches and no clear hope of improvement at halftime. I mean, you could see the guy, even the guys on the Paramount broadcasts like Dempsey and Gooch and the normally buoyant Charlie Davies. Those guys were suffering. Well, it went from, I mean, before the window. the players were even talking about like, you know, we're going to, we need to show that we can dominate these teams in Concca Calf. And then, you know, by the time we're at halftime of that match, it's just like, well, at least we're not technically mathematically eliminated with the loss here.

So there was just such a shift from domination to still mathematically alive. I think that that is sobering. Yeah. So the half. At the half, Berhalter makes three changes. Anthony Robinson on for Bello. Brendan Arrinson on for Sergeant and Sebastian Leggett on for Brooks because like you talked about earlier, we slid into a 433. So we didn't need three centerbacks anymore and Leggett joined the midfield. I mean, easily the most aggressive substitutions made by Burrhalter since the competitive game started in June.

And it was obviously necessary. Yeah, no question. So I guess, again, you get credit for recognizing that. the initial setup was terrible the same way like you know if you stab someone repeatedly with some rusty shears you get credit if you you call 911 and you know get the get the ambulance to them uh the the if there's a that it's exactly like that that's that's the metaphor that's a common metaphor uh no but it like all of those needed to happen uh you know arson is a very comfortable player in the half space uh and especially in a wide open game i like that change right away for

sergeant. And then the big one though is Brooks, right? Like that's the not obvious one. Yeah. Even if you're going to go from 3, 4-3-4-3, 4-3, taking Brooks out is like, okay, so we're riding, we're riding with McKenzie. I mean, everyone's willing to ride with miles at this point. But, you know, Brooks is usually thought of as the centerback. So that was the one for me that was like, okay, we're, you know, we are trusting McKenzie and we're,

were dropping John Brooks. Did you disagree with it? Or, I mean, obviously it worked out. But like, why was it, why was it Brooks who came off instead of McKenzie just because he got, just because he got battleshiped that one time? Didn't look, didn't look great. It could have been that, like, I don't want to say it's like punitive, but like, you know, if it's a wide open game and you need to continue the track meet to try to get the goal back, you know, I could see it making sense. and you know Brooks wasn't really doing much in the in a sense of lots of great distribution so I don't know what was your what was your read on it I I was so I mean I was so bereft at the

time that I didn't I wasn't I didn't have I didn't actually give it that much so I haven't until now but yeah it was it was it is striking that he took off Brooks and not McKenzie I mean, you know, Brooks had more minutes in the window. I guess it did occur to me. Well, maybe he's just, you know, trying to do a favor for Wolfsburg, which is a ridiculous thought. Well, yeah. And the other thing is it was McKenzie that stayed on the left, right? And Miles Robinson stayed on the right.

Yeah. I mean, McKenzie has a good left foot. He's pretty two-footed. Yep. Honduras also made three subs. Romo Keoto came on for Lozano up top, Rigoberto, Rivas came on for Toro on the right side and Jose Garcia for Carlos Paneda on the left side.

So they replaced one of their strikers and both of their outside midfielders. And right off the bat, right off the bat in the first half we score. It's Anthony Robinson who, so how does this happen? Well, I guess I look at it as Honduras is feeling good at this moment because we're so toothless in the first half. and they're just stretched.

There's way too much space and from their perspective. And Acosta nearly gives it away in zone 14, like our zone 14, right in front of our box. And Miles Robinson just has to launch it clear of danger. And it falls to Ricardo Pepe at the midfield, right at the midfield line, and he holds off a guy and does some solid yeoman's work

in the holdup, a little past to Pooley, who's off to the races. And I should mention here, I thought Pepe was pretty good in the first half, too. Like, on rewatch, he had like three or four moments of good holdup play. Like, he wasn't great, but he was, he did this stuff in the first half, too. So anyway, I thought Pulisic didn't optimize the moment. Maybe you could, why don't you talk about it from here? What happens? So Poolecic takes it directly off Pepe's feet, which is great.

And Pulsick was all by himself. Peppie had a guy on his hip, obviously. And then there were two Honduras players behind him, which, you know, it's not particularly efficient defending from Honduras to just let Poulsick has his ball. But this is what happens. And then Poulsick, off to the races with time to get his head up, like he can evaluate what's happening. The notable thing here is Anthony Robinson races past everybody like they're standing still on the left side. And he is all by himself.

So Poulsick has drawn all the attention. Poulsick and Pepe, right, is who's drawn all the attention. And Robinson is just all alone. And this is where we get into the division because it would have been like a very easy ball to a wide open passing lane from Poulosick to put Robinson in on goal. And Poulcic just never sees it. And again, I get that this is all happening really fast. And Poulcic is moving at full speed.

And there are defenders he's keeping track of who are going to try to take the ball off of his feet. But again, from the overhead view, the textbook play here is pretty straightforward. You put Robinson on the breakway. Instead, he dribbles into a tackle and has to release it at the last second and kind of releases an inelegant ball to Sebastian Leggett that, you know, breaks Legette stride and Leggett has to catch back up to it, which he does. And then Leggett whips the ball in. Peppy does a really nice little swim move here. Huh. And no, no, I'm on the, I think, no, I think he does and helps to keep this ball alive.

Or I could, I could have, I could have my goals mixed up. Pepe definitely attacks the ball and forces Figueroa to, to cut it out. I get, was Pepe credited with the assist? I guess he was. They must have touched him on the way through, but, but it's mostly just gets. They're noisy. Yeah. It's a noisy stat.

They, they, um, but Figueroa cuts it out. And he has to do it in sort of a desperate way because Pepe, is, you know, he's coming. He's coming at him. And then it falls to Robinson. Whoa, he just sort of seamlessly shared a timeline item. That's the first time I think we've ever accomplished that. And then it falls to, falls to Robinson just behind Pepe and Figueroa.

And he hits a very nice shot with his right foot. That is a difficult finish at like waist high, with his in step, keeps it down, Far corner. I did not know he was capable of doing that. Just, yeah, weak foot guides it into that far post, just out of the keeper's reach, and just out of the reach of the desperation lunge from the defender to try to clear it off the line.

And we're in, and we're back in the game. Amazing. We're back in the game. Robinson's doing a back flip. Peppy isn't even celebrating because he's grabbed the ball and is racing back to midfield because we have more goals to score. maybe. That backflip was unbelievable.

Why? I mean, I feel like the, even the broadcast didn't even know what to do with it. You know, like they were, they, they, they only gave us one small view of it. All right. And I think, just to go back to the Pulisic thing, I feel like nobody likes it when you criticize Pulisicic,

but that is that sort of moment where you, you have like, you have sort of a revert, a past that's not incredibly obvious that he misses. And then you, and then he dribbles into trouble and then, plays a pass that is kind of behind somebody, just barely gets it away,

and it's behind somebody. That is more common than not with Bullisic. Yeah, and so the idea here for me is like, I don't, I get it, but also you just, you take it because he's so good at what he does. But more importantly here is just the fact that, again, we do have good players. And so this whole situation that we set up with this ball to peppy is,

if teams do give us space and Honduras gave us way too much space here, we have the players to punish you. And even if it doesn't go off flawlessly, we have all these good players. And so this is where I'm like, okay, this is what I think we can do against teams unless they are totally buttoned up.

And there's no reason to expect that most Concaf teams are good enough to be totally buttoned up. Like Honduras were kind of a mess here for the next 40 minutes. And we have to be good enough to punish them. And we are. We have these players who are capable of it. And this is what I think we can see. This is what I'm hoping to see over the next,

nine out of the next 12 games. We'll get into how bullish we are on Burrhalter sorting that out. But 50th minute, Honduras chance for Kyoto. Sands beaten by Rivas on the right side, and he lofts a ball to the backpost, Kyoto brings it down and gets a shot off the side netting. 51st minute, a good tackle by Sands. I just noticed a couple good things from Sands in the second half that I wanted to point out.

And then Poulosik dribbles too much and launches a counter that ends in a weak Kyoto shot. That was when Pulisic was starting to be a little bit much in the midfield, like the midfield line. Just past the ball, dude. Just past the ball. 53rd minute, Pepi's pressing is really good. This is that time when he's just like chasing people all over and, and, you know, you know, forces the ball out of bounds. I mean, it goes off of him,

but he's a real nuisance. He's a real nuisance for the opponent. 54th minute, we get a good chance for Pulisic, a rip from the right side of the box. It starts with Antony finding a forward pass in the final third to Aronson's feet, which is a foreshadowing. Aronson shuttles it to Legette at the top of the box,

and then Legit shuttles it to Pulisic on the other side. And his shot draws a good save from Lerston Lopez. Still won one, but encouraging. Yeah, and that ability to find guys' feet in the box is all I want to see us doing more.

I want to see us doing that more and more. We almost never did against Canada in part because anytime we had the ball in any kind of wide space, those front players would just drift towards the goal like they were expecting a perfect cross to be put on their head. And I just feel like we have to start seeing more guys square up to the ball, move

towards it and actually go play soccer with them. And so it was good to see that. Well, you pointed out that Aronson wasn't even really ready to square up to that ball from Robinson. Like Robinson forced him to square up to it by playing the ball quickly. Right. Aronson was about to start running to the sideline. Start exercising verticality. So that happens in 54th minute, 56 minute.

I mean, I told you this was my axe to grind, but 56 minute, Pulisic not releasing the ball quickly enough in the attack, slows us down in transition. And then in the 58th minute, we get the Pulisic dribble where he goes down with an injury at the top of the box after taking on two or three guys. And he tries to come back in. He does come back in. But as soon as he has to sprint, he falls back down. And his night is over in the 61st minute. Christian Raldon comes on for him. 64th minute, we get the Turner save on a good headed shot from a set piece.

You want to talk about this one? It's just Matt Turner. and Matt Turner, like very, very good feet. So that as soon as the ball's hit, he is able to, like, explode towards it and parries it away from goal. Like, there's not much more to say about it because Matt Turner is just exceptionally clean with his shot stopping. Yeah, it was Figuera who gets a solid header on it. A little bit of a scary moment. We were allowing some, we were allowing some shenanigans, like balls just getting dropped into the box there for a, for a, for a,

few minutes, not a few minutes for like a minute. And then 66 minute we get another turner highlight. He does his walkabout on a long ball. He realizes he's outside of the box, so he chests it down and then just kind of karate kicks it out of danger. But he didn't clear out his own player the way Honduras's goalkeeper did. So, I mean, that's something. Hey man, you don't know what's going on.

Maybe Lopez has a problem with Pereira. 68th minute. Good work from Robinson, who is really just the main source of useful ball progression after he comes on. Why? Why was he so good? Like, what did he do so much better than everybody else? He's 100% lost his freneticism on the ball, hasn't he?

Seems like it, yeah. I don't know if that's if that's just like an illusion and if the freneticism was an illusion to begin with. But he just looks, he looked totally calm in that entire match. Like no one here can play with me. I am like nobody can take any, this ball away from me. I am in complete control of my situation.

Yeah. He looks so, he looks so athletic and confident and, and it's just competent. And he wanted to play, he wanted to do attack. So that good work from Robinson, the 68th minute,

results in Acosta shot from 23 yards. That isn't too bad. And I noticed, like, in a minute later, during a stoppage when Acosta is about to hit a free kick, Adams and Acosta switch places on the field. So Adams moves to central midfield, and Acosta moves to right back. This is before Yedlin comes on.

I mean, Yedlin comes on, four minutes later but it happens before yedlin comes on and it and we get to see i i feel like that is the that is like the turning point in the game for me it's not the turning point but it's like the clincher because because he because adams is really alert on a long ball after a restart you probably notice that where he like runs it down and clears the danger i think it was keoto he was he was chasing or keoto was chasing him but then in the 71st minute Adams picks the ball up, like just back of our, of the center circle, and dribbles like 40 yards right up the middle of the pitch.

Ball progression and taps it wide for Leggett, and Leggett returns it to Adams. And Adams has a good shot from distance, draws a pretty good save from Lopez. I just thought, man, that, why couldn't we do that before? Well, because Adams wasn't in the midfield before. But it had the same feeling, right, of watching Robin. on the left side, but now Adams in the middle,

where it just feels like he is totally in control of the entire game from there, right? He was dominant from the moment he switched with Acosta to the end of the game. A man who increased in strength as the game went on. Robinson 71st minute. Robinson does some good chasing back to cover Kyoto on another nervy Honduras counter,

and you just got to see how fast he was and responsible. I've been doing a lot of talking. You got any thoughts about any of this at the moment? No, but it other than it did feel like the tide had totally turned. Like it was completely the U.S. at this point. Yeah. And then Yedlin comes on for Sands and Acosta goes back to midfield. So it's in Acosta Adams and Legette midfield, I guess.

And then rolled on in Aronson on the wings. and in 75th minute we get the we get the goal it's the exact same pattern that led to that pull of six shot in the 54th minute a good stuff good stuff from mackenzie and acosta mackenzie takes the ball at midfield from somebody he kind of wrecks them dribbles past another guy passes it to acosta accosta taps it to robinson and then robinson finds erinson's feet right at the corner of the box erinson shuttles it to legett and then legett shuttles it wide to yedlin Yellen steps on the ball once and then hits a cross. The interesting thing about Pepe, you know, Pepe's movement before the goal is he is,

he is pushed to the ground by Figaroa. And I think in the process is lost by the Honduran defense. Like nobody picks him up after he gets knocked down. So I like to think maybe he did that on purpose. I don't, I don't know. It's clever if it is. And so he's so the ball finds him between two centerbacks. He's pretty much unmarked and he, it's a terrific header right inside the near post and a good ball from DeAndre Yedlin, a player that I have had some criticism of over the over the years.

Yeah, Yedlin's taken way, was taking way too much heat for the Canada game. And I'm really glad he had this moment. But yes, the picture like the exact carbon copy from that earlier sequence where, Again, the ball goes out to Robinson wide from Acosta, and Aronson is right there. And instead of squaring up to play with Robinson, Aronson starts to run away again and starts to vacate the space. And Robinson plays it early enough that it forces Aronson to like sit home and collect the ball. And then he moves it.

And we just move it very quickly across the other side of the field, then whip it right back in. And my very favorite moment of this play is Christian Raldon's fake volleyball spike on the ball as it goes. and it goes like four meters over his head. I mean, it is funny. I mean, it's funny to talk about, but it does draw Figaro's attention a little bit, you know? He has to like sort of be aware of him.

What a moment though. Like that's, that's awesome. That was special, I thought. Yeah, absolutely. For all to talk about like the, maybe we're too young, maybe we're too inexperienced for the,

for the 18-year-old kid in his debut on the road. to get that goal pretty fantastic. The kid from El Paso who chose to play for the U.S. like a couple weeks ago, you know, probably could have played for Mexico. Probably could play for Mexico someday. And he chose the U.S.

And I wasn't sure he was going to play in this window. I mean, certainly wasn't sure after the first two matches. And sure enough, he plays, and he scores the game winner. And it's a fantastic. That's the goal. And he, you know,

he's probably the, I mean, he's not like the locked in starter at the nine for the U.S. I wouldn't think. But it's not that hard to be at the top of that pecking order right now. I think he probably gets a couple starts,

you know, next window, or at least one. I'd be shocked if he doesn't. I know, I saw Gary Clyburn sort of poking fun at U.S. fans. And I think he's Gary Clybin is generally frustrated with U.S. fans. He hates all of us. Yes.

But like I actually get it. I mean, he's like, oh, a month ago, this was, D.K. was the guy. And a month before that, it was, you know, this guy in a month. And I understand that. But also, I don't think that that's necessarily the wrong way to go about it because our striking core is so weak. You know, it's like the bar is so low that it is going to be very fickle. And so what Pepe is done, even though it's one data point. And he, He's got, you know, 25 professional games to his name is enough at this point to be like, oh, he is the current presumptive starter that could literally change after the next window. But at this point, it totally makes sense.

Like, yep, Pepe's probably the guy now. It doesn't mean that he's locked in through Qatar. Right. But for the next window, I would be pretty surprised if he doesn't start to his game. It's a heavy data point, too, though. You got to admit, you know what I mean? It's in a way World Cup qualifier. it's a fantastic goal.

I mean, the only thing that even comes close that I can think of in the past year is that is P-Fox goal to beat Honduras at the death. And like, I mean, Pepe's performance last night was much more comprehensive than P-Fox's, like, 10-minute cameo against Honduras. Yeah, exactly. If it were just this header goal for Pepe,

then I wouldn't be as swayed. like, it'd be like, okay, that was an awesome goal. But you know me. I'm reluctant to like give a ton of weight to just one goal. Because again, Pfok did the same thing with his header in the Honduras game. And Pfok had a really good header or a really good header chance against El Salvador when he came on. So it's like, okay, for me, those are roughly equivalent, even though Pebbie scored his. But Pepey just did so many other things.

And if you go back to that, like, the Honduras game that Pfeck played in in Nations League, he only touched the ball like one other time in that cameo. so it's not like you can say he had this great performance. Pepe was immense in a lot of different ways in the second half of this game. Which we're about to get into. So 86 minute, I'm not going to be as comprehensive with my timeline items here. So the 86 minute, Christian Rodon pounces on a mistake from left back Diego Rodriguez, who tries to lift it over him, but it doesn't get it done.

and it just bounces off Rodd's chest, and then he pokes it to Pepey, who carries it in behind, you know, races in behind with the ball and squares it for Aronson to finish pass Lopez. The pass is a little underweighted,

but it's good enough, and it's 3-1. And basically the route is on and Honduras is complete, I mean, Honduras is pretty much broken by Pepe's goal, I think it's fair to say. But now they're super broken.

And, I mean, I mean, I don't know, like, I watched that goal again, like, over and over again, and I keep checking the scoreboard to be like, it's only two to one here. Honduras are only down one goal, and their centerback is trying to, like, scoop a ball over. Yeah. Over Christian Roddon, just like a wild attempt. And, you know, we probably barely even think about it. But if a U.S. player did that in a two-one game in a World Cup qualifier, it'd be his head. Well, the, I mean, the reports from the stadium were that, like,

Honduran fans were throwing stuff at their own players and cheering for U.S. players. Like, they were allaying their own team. They were. That's true. Right after, like, right after it went 3-1. Well, how about that for being a data point that it doesn't matter where we play our games, our home games. If we look good, we don't have to worry about hostile crowds.

I guess, yeah. Yeah, I mean, it also does give a little bit of the lie to this idea that you're going to get, like, murdered if you go to Central America to play a national team game or a World Cup qualifier. Like, there's this idea that it's like, it's like super, super dangerous or like the crowds are, the crowds hate the American players or something. It doesn't, it doesn't appear to be that way anymore if it ever was. Yeah, El Salvador, weren't our guys taking pictures with the El Salvador fans? Yeah, it just seemed like the pictures with El Salvador fans, the appreciation for the U.S. team in San Pedro, Sula does seem to like undercut that narrative a little bit.

And then in the 93rd minute we get our, we get legit school. Adams, who'd been, like I said, boss in the game for the last 20 minutes, took the ball from somebody in midfield and strode into the final third. clipped it wide to Pepe, who took a good shot. I thought it was a good shot. And Lopez palms it wide to Legette for a tap-in, 4-1, put him to the sword. You were a little nervous about Adams going into a 50-50 challenge like that. Yeah, the ball's bouncing between him and another guy.

And again, I do feel like maybe in another era, that would have been a chance for a Honduras player to just absolutely wreck Adams. but the Honduras player pulled out of this too and maybe this is another sign that their coaches lost them because he totally pulled out of the challenge and allowed Adams to skip by and then just a terrible decision from the Honduras centerback who was on Pepey but left him to step to Adams

even though there were other defenders who could have intercepted Adams and Adams recognizes it well and releases the ball which is what we want to see from our attackers in these situations so Pepe has a free path to goal pretty shambolic from Honduras there toward the end. They definitely just cashed out at this point.

And this is the other thing. I think this is something we can do. We can play teams to the point, even on the road, of them essentially quitting on the game. We did it all through last cycle actually at home, where we did have teams give up. Honduras gave up against us at home last cycle. Panama did the same. If we can start getting them to give up on the road, that'd be pretty incredible. We, the XG, the XG battle was not, it wasn't a runaway victory for us.

I mean, I know, you know, single game XG, single game XG is not, is not to be trusted, but, you know, just as a proxy for like chance creation. I think what was it like 1.8 to 1.4 or something like that. Wouldn't surprise me. Like neither Robinson, Anthony's goal and Pepe's header aren't necessarily like great looks. Yeah. Aronson had a pretty good look and Legette had a pretty good look. Those are going to put the thumbs on the scale.

So how do, how, so I, I did want to fire Burrhalter at halftime. I didn't want to fire him at the end of the game. I, what do you think? So I feel, again, I think honestly, like, if the game would continue that way, I think you would, I think you would almost, I would be in favor of getting rid of him because again, we're in active harm territory. And I don't necessarily know that him correcting it is like everything's all good now. I almost think we got to approach Burhalter the same way we approach players on the team who have shown these like vulnerabilities. It feels like Greg Berhalter at this point remains a liability to the team and that you can't trust him to put anything resembling like our strongest group.

out on the field or you can't trust that he won't get a little bit too nuts and kind of go at this point like the way I described it's like that was a that was a Juergen-Klemsman lineup where Clemsman was sort of pilloried for that kind of thing rightfully in my mind of just like throwing something at the wall

with no preparation no semblance of again a logical progression from what had been gone on before and just like well let's try this and absolutely like not putting the team in position to succeed. And so the question is going to be, is this still, do we still have to worry about this from Greg Burhalter as we go through the next windows?

Oh yeah. We got to worry about it for sure. 100%. So are the rosters cute proof? You know, he talked about he had to play Adams out on the right because Yedlin had, they didn't think Yedlin could go the full match. And even that's like such a cop out because you weren't tied to just the players that were on your initial roster.

Like if you were worried about your right back depth when Sergino Desk gets injured, you can bring in another player. You don't have to sit on your hands and just be like, well, those are the breaks. We got to play with what we started with. You can bring in extra players. Yeah. And he brought in one extra player in the window.

That was Jackson Ewell who didn't see the field last night. Bit of a cute addition, if we're being very honest. Yeah, just like a pointless one, really. I mean, what's the idea there? Yeah, like the other thing was burning. I mean, I think we mentioned this already, but burning both right backs in El Salvador, you know, Dest on the left and Yedlin on the right.

Did sort of, that was sort of the domino that started this process whereby Adams is playing on at right back. But of course, desk injury was also part of it. But yeah, I don't know. I don't know why wouldn't he pull, wouldn't he call up more people? I don't know if that question was asked in any of the press conferences. It was.

He went on a long list of players that he would like to have. But again, it's not exhaustive. Like if you need bodies or bodies to call in. So I don't know. That seems strange to me. We'll see what his approach is for the next window. The next window is two home games. So that cuts out some of the wear and tear of travel within the window,

which should matter. The other big deal for the next window is that the European-based players who probably weren't considered by Burrhalter because they either were just back from the Gold Cup and so sort of in their preseason should be sort of in full swing, which should add to the player pool. So it's going to be really interesting to see sort of what he's learned or whether we can kind of tell what changes he's made with his decision-making. I hopefully Shackmore will get a look. Hopefully, hopefully Julian Arahu comes around and, you know, accepts a call up. I think he,

like I've said many times before, it sure seems like the door is open for him to be a crucial player for this squad. Yeah. Let's talk about a couple positive things. I want to say a couple positive things about what we learned last night. Oh, there are plenty. Go for it. Well, I mean, Pepe, I think Pepe's sort of the front runner in a weak field

of striker candidates. So that's awesome. Anthony Robinson should be, I'm definitely not the only person saying this. I think everybody's saying it, but Anthony Robinson should be the nailed on left back for now for the U.S. So that gives us, that hopefully reduces the chances of desk cuteness from Burrhalter.

Yeah, I very much hope that we are, we haven't, that we don't see death on the west side of the field going forward. And other than that, I mean, I know everybody's really high on Erinson. I think he's clearly a useful player. He's clearly a useful player. And, you know, he scored two goals in this window.

He works his, he works his butt off. Like you said earlier, he is comfortable in the half space. What else? What are the other positives? So Miles Robinson's a huge positive for me. and we'd already seen him do it in the gold cup. But, you know, that was his sort of first data point, his first real ones. So to now see him carry it over and be at the same level for these qualifiers, that's massive.

Just to know that that's settled, right? Like we have a centerback we can rely on. We're going to have to use at least three of them per window, I think. I don't think there's any way you can run both of them the entire windows. But it was also good to see that Miles Robinson can run 270. minutes two away games, that's pretty useful information. Yeah. I don't find, I don't think of Robinson as like a new positive because I thought he was so good in the

Gold Cup that it's like I kind of expected him to be this good in the qualifiers, maybe not 270 minutes covering, you know, thousands of miles of air travel, but just as a soccer player, I wasn't surprised. Oh, yeah. I wasn't, I mean, I was expecting him to be. cast in this role, but I still, I mean, when you get the confirmation, that's still, that's still pretty great. And the same thing kind of goes from Matt Turner then to, to come in and be more or less,

certainly mistake-free from the shot-stopping front. That's a, that, it just feels good to, again, have that confirmation. You think he's going to be the number one now? Man, I hope so. Like, I don't see any reason not to keep riding the goalkeeper who is more or less mistake-free when it comes to keeping the ball out of the net. You think it's going back to rotation? You think he drops to number two?

I don't. I think Burrhalter's probably going to start him from now on. You know, Canada famously drew us in Nashville, obviously. And I, but they do, they had a very easy window when it came to travel. Something Burrhalter pointed out, but it's also true. You know, they were in Toronto for two of their games and then they had to fly down to Nashville, which is, you know, not that far. so they're going to have they're going to have some more difficult days ahead of them at the same time

as we are going to have you know less difficult windows ahead of us i think it was it was pretty clear when the schedule was set out that this window this first window is the second is the second most difficult one i think so that's a little positive to take away from this uh no yeah definitely And just the, I mean, again, if we're actually worried about World Cup qualification, a bunch of the other results broke in our favor. So we're doing, we're sitting very pretty as far as, you know, the chances of actually qualifying, which we need to be this. There shouldn't be any, like we shouldn't be leaving any doubt. So it's, it's nice that we are not leaving that doubt at the moment. It's still, yeah, I think the way you put it earlier is good.

It's like it's, it seems like Burrhalter is, if not a clear liability, arguably a liability to the team. And it'd be different if like the good sides of it were just excellent. You know, like if we were just moving the ball around and then occasionally he had like scoring tons of goals, but then occasionally he has these weird decisions on lineups. But that just hasn't been the case, right? Like the flip side of it is he's when we are playing our good players in a normal lineup, we still don't look that great.

So that's where it gets into like what's what value is Burrhalter adding? Like that's the question I feel like I got to ask. And so right now the obvious answer is he's got a lot of very good dual national players to wear the uniform, which is that is a big one. And speaking of which I can't wait for Eunice Musa to get back in the squad. That's going to help a lot. It looks like we're not going to have Raina. in October.

Well, it's early to say that, but Dortmund said he's out for a month. We'll talk about that more another time. Any other, anything else you want to say, Greg? I was hoping for a nine-point window by half-time of the Honduras game. I was not optimistic that we were going to have a three-point window. So, again, it's this really like a very wild roller coaster ride to get to our five points. at the moment. Yeah, five points felt like

winning the World Series. The World Series of baseball. That's the World Series I'm talking about. All right. Thanks everybody for listening. We'll see you.